Yesterday a legal application seeking permission for judicial review of SNH’s disgraceful decision to licence the mass culling of ravens in Strathbraan ‘just to see what happens’ was lodged at the Court of Session on behalf of the Scottish Raptor Study Group.
The fantastic legal team working on this issue (thanks to the generosity of those who supported the crowdfunder) have worked hard to build a case and lodge this application within the restricted time frame allowed. Kudos and thanks to Sindi Mules of Balfour & Manson and Aidan O’Neill QC of Matrix Chambers.
The next steps will be a court order permitting the lawyers to serve the petition on SNH, and then a period of 21 days for SNH to provide ‘Answers’ (a response) to the points raised in the petition.
Then a judge at the Court of Session will consider the petition and the Answers and decide whether the case is strong enough to proceed to a full substantive hearing. There isn’t a set time frame for this and much will depend on how busy the court is.
We’ll keep you posted, of course, but won’t be providing any further details of the petition as legal proceedings have now begun.
The crowdfunder closed early this morning and the stretch target of £25k was smashed! An amazing 1087 people donated £26,765. That’s brilliant!
Thank you to everyone who donated and supported this effort to get #Justice4Ravens and made this legal challenge possible.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Excellent news! Saw four ravens over Stob Coire Raineach, Glen Coe, today and wished them well.
Does the fact that a legal objection is now being made, cause the whole ‘Raven culling’ process to be halted, or do they just continue until a legal decision is made? You’d think that the whole project would be halted until legal opinion/judgement was made, or possibly I just don’t understand? (but am willing to be enlightened if I’m wrong).
Great to hear things are proceeding. Best of luck with the case.
I see the SNH director behind the raven cull now wants to save Nessie – looks like a bit of distraction from SNH. If Nessie exists, she better not go anywhere near a grouse moor or else she’d end up like the ravens. Is it a coincidence that SNH’s Nick Halfhide was also exposed for watering down SNH’s objections to Coul Links?